Development Factory

ABSTRACT

Development factory includes modeling and manufacturing facilities with 3-D printers and material-feeders controlled by the system with conversational semantic support providing accelerated process for developing products and services for medical, military and transportation applications.

This description is not intended to be a complete description of, or limit the scope of, the invention.

BACKGROUND OF INVENTION

The present invention relates generally to the field of product and services development. More specifically, the invention discloses a system and method that integrates product and service development and knowledge engineering. The invention accelerates development and manufacturing processes by including conversational semantic support systems (CSSS) as an active participant and a partner of a subject matter expert (SME) in the process.

Development factory consists of a plurality of CSSS, each with its own area of knowledge. Initiated by a request from a SME, CSSS engage in collaborative development and manufacturing, where collaboration between knowledge-driven systems becomes the leading element of the development.

Traditionally, a user initiates each step of development and in each step initiates communications with a computer program. A program is a passive participant in the process, responding to search requests with data.

The invention elevates the role of a computer program to almost equal partnership. The program is trying to “understand” the meaning of the conversation. When successful, it comes back not only with data but also with its own initiation of the next step. If not successful, the program comes back with a clarifying question, making sure that ambiguities are resolved.

CSSS includes a conversational initiator with a set of initial scripts to prompt a SME to expand the initial idea with more details.

This eliminates or essentially decreases the layer of translations, not only saving time and resources, but preventing the “lost in translation” cases, especially often happened in big projects that involve many teams.

The program directly communicates with the SME who initiated the idea of business change, but not necessary knows all details required for implementation.

A simplest example would be creating a new web application. A SME would write “The application requires user to LOGIN.” The program takes this sentence to its semantic mapping engine and finds an existing enterprise service, which can be reused here. The program do not assume that this is the only correct answer to the request. Instead, the program would ask for confirmation: “Do you mean to use the existing Authentication Service?” When a user confirms, the program continues, “Do you plan to use a set of User Privileges? If so, please specify, for example, Administrator, User, DBA, Editor, etc.”

These conversations result in building the pieces of the application. Not all requests can be easily resolved. In such cases the program will try to retrieve more precise specifications, which can be mapped to existing service definitions. In the case of total mapping failure, the program will request a set of complete requirements followed by implementation and by semantically meaningful description. These new definitions done once will be added to the semantic mapping mechanism and will be found for a similar request.

Of course, the system will benefit developers only after it was significantly filled in with information. In the beginning, most of requests will result in negative responses and the SME would manually find the solution and manually execute every development step.

The conversational system will capture the descriptions of every step in the proper sub-systems.

This is similar to storing log files as it is often done in computer systems. Except, the log files are formatted as RDF semantic graphs, so they are understood by the programs.

Then, the next time in a similar development process the conversational system will be able to find and use the technical details to automate several development steps.

Here a sample of the system's functionality:

When a SME starts initiation process by loggin in the system, a conversation initiator (CI) prompts the SME with a question:

-   -   What are your development goals?

As the SME start answering the question, CI explores the opportunity to collect more details on the goals to map the goals to some existing services.

For example, the SME answers:

-   -   building a flying car.

CI cannot find any mapping to this goal definition and will ask a deeper question:

-   -   What criteria would satisfy the goal?

SME provides the following details:

-   -   Minimum number of people in the car—2;     -   Minimum flight distance—100 miles     -   A car-plane with vertical take off     -   A car-plane with vertical landing

A semantic mapping system (SMS), which is connected to the conversation initiator system will be mapping natural language into technological descriptions, starting from business scenarios and manufacturing steps and further to standard-based technological descriptions;

The system would find (on the web or/and in BRSS) the business descriptions related to cars and to planes and come up with the alternatives—questions:

-   -   Is this a vehicle?

SME would confirm:—yes

CI/SMS will continue:

-   -   What kind of vehicle?     -   1. Car     -   2. Plane     -   3. Both

SME:—3.

CI/SMS

-   -   What is your vehicle power source:     -   1. electric,     -   2. oil or     -   3. hybrid

The SME answers:

-   -   Electric

CI/SMS would continue communicating with BRSS and continue questioning:

-   -   Alternative materials for the vehicle:     -   1. Material1-weight1-price1

2. Material2-weight2-price2

The SME would answer:—1 (selecting the first choice)

As this type of development did not happen before, CI/SMS would expand with a generic question:

-   -   More details or rules?

The SME would answer:

-   -   FAA regulations for flight elevation

This would lead to retrieving FAA rules from the network; Most probably the first attempts like that would not be successful and the negative answer will force the SME to manually search, invent and describe a solution, which will be captured by the system, so the next time around the data will be available.

Think of that as storing a log file. storing in the semantic graph format, so the programs will understand and will be capable to map this information to business goals and scenarios describe in natural language.

The next step in the process is manufacturing a prototype.

The conversational system would ask if proper data are available from the manufacturing steps description system (MSDS).

If not, the first time the manufacturing will be done manually and the necessary descriptions will be captured by MSDS.

The next time these descriptions will be available to be passed to the manufacturing steps execution system (MSES).

A marketing evaluation system (MES) would use the information from previous steps to calculate the price of the prototype and start a conversation with a marketing SME to develop initial approach to marketing the product.

Then a SME would start a marketing campaign and continue conversing with MES to analyze results and correct the campaign, trying to evaluate marketing conditions, mass production quantity and negote the terms of usage and rates.

Initial conversations are based on initial generic scripts that prompt a SME for more details. With more information captured by a system, the scripts will benefit from new branches of logics in the semantic graphs related to each knowledge domain.

DRAWING DESCRIPTIONS

FIG. 1.

Development Factory with Conversational Semantic Support

FIG. 2.

Conversational Semantic Support Systems (CSSS)

FIG. 3

Conversation Initiator

FIG. 4

Semantic Mapping System

FIG. 5

Business Rules and Scenario System

FIG. 6

Manufacturing Steps and Technological System

FIG. 7

Manufacturing Steps Execution

FIG. 8

Marketing Evaluation System

FIG. 9

Cluster of Semantic Graph Processing Units (SGPU) with Embedded Semantic Graph Processing System

Semantic Graph Processing units (SGPU) are grouped in clusters.

Each cluster is responsible for a specific knowledge domain, which includes many related subjects.

FIG. 10

Semantic Graph Processing Network

The clusters of Semantic Graph Processing units are connected in the Semantic Graph Processing Network

Conversation Initiator is also implemented as a cluster of GPU.

When Conversation Initiator recognizes the subject already captured in SGPU clusters, the conversational stream, conversational request and response are focused on the cluster with detected knowledge domain.

If none of existing subjects match criteria, the system sends the request to a cloud with GPU resources for a new GPU on demand to capture information for a new subject. 

1. A Development Factory for accelerated development and manufacturing products and services by subject matter experts, later called SME; connected via the network with a plurality of the conversational semantic support systems, later called CSSS, and manufacturing components including but not limited to: material feeder providing selected materials; 3-D Printers; assembly system; where CSSS, specialized in different knowledge domains, comprising: a conversation initiator system, for initiation conversational communications with plurality CSSS and SME to retrieve information describing the development and manufacturing goals and to mapping development and manufacturing goals to existing services and initiating detailing of development and manufacturing goals into business scenarios and manufacturing steps and further to standard-based technological descriptions for the steps, which are not found by the mapping system; a semantic mapping system, which is connected to the conversation initiator system, for mapping natural language based information to the standard protocols, starting from business scenarios and manufacturing steps descriptions and further to standard-based technological descriptions; a business rules and scenarios system, which is connected to the conversation initiator system and the semantic mapping system, for storing the original development descriptions as business scenarios; a manufacturing steps and technological system, which is connected to the conversation initiator system, the semantic mapping system, and the business scenarios system, for storing the business descriptions further detailed into manufacturing steps and standard-based technological descriptions; a manufacturing steps execution system for execution manufacturing steps and technological descriptions, which is connected to the conversation initiator system, the semantic mapping system, the business scenarios system, and the manufacturing steps and technological system; a marketing evaluation system, which is connected to the conversation initiator system and the semantic mapping system for evaluation of marketing conditions, approximation of mass production quantity and negotiation of the terms of usage and rates;
 2. A Development Factory method for accelerated development and manufacturing product and services by subject matter experts, later called SME, connected via the network with a plurality of the conversational semantic support systems, later CSSS, specialized in different knowledge areas, comprising the following steps: propagating to the network a specialization graph describing knowledge ontologies supported by CSSS; receiving initial business goals from SME and CSSS, where initial business goals and requirements are present in natural language; defining the main subjects and related knowledge areas and “tag” the initial business descriptions with the meta-data; comparing the meta-data of the requirements with the specialization of a current CSSS, calculating and sending to the network the relevance index to define the level of participation in the current collaborative development and manufacturing process; initiating conversations with the plurality of CSSS to provide semantic mapping of the business goals and requirements to business rules and scenarios, then further down to manufacturing steps and standard-based technological descriptions; creating association graph, which is mapping information across all stages of the process; evaluating completeness of the mapping with validation of standard-based technological descriptions against existing standards; initiating conversational message exchange by sending request to CSSS and SME to retrieve missing information and fill in informational gaps in the process of semantic mapping; checking if association graph, at each step of its creation, reflects components of any previously created and archived graphs; if found, sending an archived association graph to the conversational message to confirm existing mapping; if association records are not found, continuing the conversation by sending a specific request for missing information to other CSSS and SME; if no information found, recommend the SME to manually fill in the informational gap in the process and converse with the SME to collect new information in the formatted semantic graph understood by a program; so the next time the system would be able to find and use these data for automation; checking for integrity of business rules and scenarios to reject a new rule or scenario which is in conflict with the existing rules and requesting the correction; transforming business rules and scenarios into standard-based technological descriptions and conversing with SME for conformation and specific requests for missing information; initiating conversations with plurality of CSSS and SME for collecting marketing conditions, approximation of mass production quantity and negotiation of the terms of usage and rates; collecting ontology graph for the developed product and ranking the connections in the graph, calculating approximate demand and suggested terms of usage and rates based on the ranked connections and sending the results in the conversational line for corrections and negotiations; storing a history of conversations and negotiations to dynamically re-evaluate and rank the level of specialization of CSSS and SME according to their knowledge domains expanding initial conversational scripts with new logical branches obtained as a result of new information provided by a SME
 3. The development factory of claim 1 where the conversation initiator, further comprising the initiation services with initial scripts and the collaborative development controller, which communicates with other CSSS and SME, when not all components of a development request can be found within a single CSSS.
 4. The collaborative development controller of claim 3 further comprising the collaborative development criteria for assigning one of the CSSS to become a task coordinator, based on criteria, including relevance to a business domain of the CSSS and based on a current system load, where the task coordinator system initiates and supports the conversations and negotiations for the current task.
 5. The Development Factory of claim 1 where the semantic mapping system, further comprising: semantic ontology graph, mapping conversational scripts, integrity evaluator and development documents registry for: navigating over the graph and creating conversational messages to define relevant branches of the graph; conversing with the business rules and scenarios system and mapping initial goals and requirements to the branches of the graph describing business rules and scenarios; conversing with the manufacturing steps and technological system and mapping business rules and scenarios to the branches of the graph describing manufacturing steps in the terms of technological standards; evaluating integrity and success of mapping with the existing semantic graph, and request additional information, if necessary, by conversing via the conversation initiator system with CSSS and SME; expanding a semantic graph with mapping results, which connect initial goals and requirements with business rules and scenarios and further to manufacturing steps described in technological standards; registering development documents, technical descriptions and diagrams, received from CSSS and SME in the process of collaborative development conversation and mapped to the semantic graph.
 6. The Development Factory of claim 1 where the business rules and scenario system further comprising business rules and scenarios semantic graph, business rules and scenarios registry, mapping conversational scripts and integrity evaluator for: navigating over the graph of business rules and scenarios to define relevant to the current task branches of the graph and generating conversational messages to address any missing data; conversing with semantic mapping system and mapping business rules and scenarios of the current task to the graph of business rules and scenarios; storing business rules and scenarios in the business rules and scenarios registry with the reference information, which is mapping the rules and scenarios to the semantic graph; evaluating integrity and success of mapping with the existing semantic graph, and request additional information, if necessary, by conversing via the conversation initiator system with CSSS and SME.
 7. The Development Factory of claim 1 where the manufacturing steps and technological system further comprising a semantic graph describing manufacturing steps, manufacturing steps registry, mapping conversational scripts and integrity evaluator for: navigating over the graph of manufacturing steps to define relevant to the current task branches of the graph and generating conversational messages to address any missing data; conversing with semantic mapping system and mapping manufacturing steps of the current task to the graph of manufacturing steps; storing manufacturing steps in the manufacturing steps registry with the reference information, which is mapping the manufacturing steps to the semantic graph; evaluating integrity and success of mapping with the existing semantic graph, and request additional information, if necessary, by conversing via the conversation initiator system with CSSS and SME;
 8. The Development Factory of claim 1 where the manufacturing steps execution system further comprising specific manufacturing system instructions registry for: receiving instructions of the manufacturing steps including but not limited to: specifying materials with material feeder instructions; specifying 3-D printers and 3-D modeling instructions; specifying assembly instructions; transforming specific instructions for specific manufacturing systems into system-expected format.
 9. The Development Factory of claim 1 where the marketing evaluation system further comprising a semantic graph describing marketing terms and values, marketing evaluation registry, mapping conversational scripts and integrity evaluator for: navigating over the semantic graph describing marketing terms and values providing marketing evaluation including but not limiting to product and service demand, access and usage conditions, relevant to the currently developed and generating conversational messages to address any missing data; conversing with semantic mapping system and mapping marketing terms and values of the currently developed product and services to the semantic graph describing marketing terms and values; conversing with CSSS and SME in the process of negotiation of marketing values, including but not limited to usage and price terms with potential clients; storing marketing terms and values in the marketing evaluation registry with the reference information, which is mapping marketing terms and values to the semantic graph; evaluating integrity and success of mapping with the existing semantic graph, and request additional information, if necessary, by conversing via the conversation initiator system with CSSS and SME.
 10. The Development Factory method for accelerated development and manufacturing product and services of claim 2, further comprising the following steps for marketing evaluations: storing usage and price terms, including but not limited to desired product and service value in dollars or a virtual score set by a potential client; tracking product and service requests and calculating the marketing values based on demand and previous negotiations; negotiating service terms and values, where the negotiation starts with rule-based computerized negotiations between CSSS, and after pre-defined number of negotiation cycles, the conversational semantic support coordinator system will send a request to SME for confirmation and resolution.
 11. The Development Factory of claim 1 where the semantic mapping system, business scenario system, manufacturing steps system, and marketing evaluation system are interconnected as a cluster of embedded semantic graph processing systems with semantic graph processing units (SGPU) specifically designed to process semantic ontology graph for: accelerating processing and navigation over a semantic graph of OWL, RDF, JSON or other format data, which describe a semantic graph with multiple connections between subsystems; providing direct communications between processing units, which describe a single knowledge area from different perspectives, including but not limited by business goals, scenarios, manufacturing steps and technology perspectives.
 12. The Development Factory of claim 11 where the multiple CSSS, each with its own knowledge domain, are interconnected as a semantic graph processing network (SGPN) for: providing direct communications between different knowledge areas captured by their semantic graphs and accelerating processing.
 13. The Development Factory of claim 3 where conversation initiators of different CSSS are connected into a conversation initiator cluster for: providing communications between conversation initiators of different CSSS, where the collaborative development controller of the conversation initiator directs conversation messages to a selected CSSS based on the knowledge areas and the load; providing a request for additional SGPU when the conversation initiator comes up with a new subject in the knowledge area, where the number of subjects and the current load are beyond a pre-defined level.
 14. The Development Factory of claim 13 further comprising a cloud of SGPU connected to the conversation initiator cluster for: providing a new SGPU on demand to be loaded with a new subject and connected to the semantic graph processing network. 